Thursday, May 4, 2017

Frederick Douglass by D. H.

Frederick Douglass's autobiography served as a firsthand look
into the life of a slave and a argument against the cruelties of slavery
America. The first nine chapters gave detailed accounts of the pain,
grief, and struggles that Douglass and other slaves that he lived around
endured over the span of his childhood to his young adulthood. These
chapters explained the many of his experiences: never getting to know
his mother and never knowing who his father was, watching his family
members be beaten and abused, hearing of and seeing other slaves being
whipped, attacked, and even killed, sleeping on damp cold floors and
being underfed and under-clothed... he provides a seemingly endless
amount of traumatic accounts that he had somehow survived.

Everything detailed within this reading was from the perspective of
Frederick Douglass himself. This was a powerful tool. No longer would
the horrors of slavery be explained in distant and obscure ways. His
novel made it all personal and very real. The voices of slaveholders and
anti-abolitionists are never truly heard, only documented from
Douglass's perspective.

The class primarily discussed what we found shocking about slavery,
seeing as this was our first experience with a resource that documented
slavery from a firsthand perspective. We discussed Douglass's purpose
and how his skill as a writer and speaker on slavery and his experiences
drove the Abolitionist movement. Furthermore, the class spoke of how
Douglass had honed his ability to sway the hearts of Northerners and
Westerners and that this experience likely had a powerful effect on how
he worded his writing and what he did and did not share. The class
talked about the difference between the personal stories of Douglass and
the impersonal writing of abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison.

Most questions
made by the class remained on the topic of the nature of slavery. Those
included how slave songs worked and the culture around them. We came to
the conclusion that they were heavily coded and were often used to
communicate that slaves were planning to run away. We also inquired
about the underground railroad and the ways in which Northerners helped
runaway slaves. The answers that we reached were that Northerners often
disregarded national laws concerning fugitive slaves or made laws that
directly contradicted federal laws on the topic. Northerners housed
slaves, used their homes as markers and hints to reach the railroad or
as signs that they were friendly to slaves, and that the Fugitive Slave
Act ended up creating a strong opposition of slavery in the North
because it reinforced the harsh reality and cruelty of slavery when
bounty hunters and policemen entered their communities and hauled slaves
away before their very eyes.

These first nine chapters leave
many questions behind, despite the amount of information and detail that
it offers. What other kinds of books and newspapers did Douglass read
in Baltimore? Were slaves in households more commonly better fed and
clothed than slaves on plantations? What were some other slave songs
that Douglass knew of and what could they mean? What did he read about
concerning slavery that he found to be untrue?